Page 11 of The Expat Affair

I’ve just turned up my street when a text hits my new phone, a message from the detective asking how I’m doing and if I’ve found any more trackers. When two days ago I told him I’d left the first one on the tram, he made me promise to bring any others I might find straight to the police station. He says it’s the only way to trace them to the owner.

As much as I appreciate the detective’s check-in, I don’t love the thought of holding on to the next tracker long enough for my stalker to grab me on the way to the police station. The idea terrifies me, even more so when I think how close that asshole had to get in order to drop a tracker in my bag.

I dodge shoppers as I pound out a reply. All quiet for now. Will keep you posted.

I slip the phone in my pocket, adding a new item to my to-do list: research trackers so that next time—and it seems like Detective Boomsma assumes there will be a next time—I know how to disarm the little fucker.

I’m almost home when I pause in front of the Chanel store, eyeing a thick cluster of bodies across the street. At least a dozen of them, parked between Ferragamo and the Mont Blanc store, and not a single shopping bag among them. Weird, since this is the P.C. Hooftstraat, the poshest of Amsterdam’s shopping streets, where stores like to line people up on the street while they wait for entry.

But these people aren’t lingering behind a red velvet rope. They’re not standing by a storefront but next to a plain brown door.

My door.

Damn reporters. I duck behind a group of tourists before they see me. With that nipple picture still making the rounds on social media and the threads doxing me by name, I suppose it was only a matter of time before they found me.

Dutch reporters, I can tell by their height and their clothing. Dark, slim-cut denim and coats made for Holland’s sea climate, thick and waterproof. Sturdy shoes for walking on ancient cobblestones. Windswept hair and foreheads that have never seen a spot of Botox.

One of them, an older blonde with glasses and cheeks ruddy from the cold, peels off from the group. She marches to the brown door and leans in to read the names by the bells. Five floors, five apartments, five names written in neat block letters. She turns back to the group and shakes her head.

As one, the group tips their heads back and look up the face of the building—and I think back to a picture further down on my Instagram, a grinning me with my arms spread wide, standing before the same brick facade, the same brown door. I follow their gazes to the very top, to the window just under a hoisting hook strong enough to haul up a piano. Behind that window is a drafty, cramped living room, with beige walls and creaky floors and a narrow hallway that leads to the back of the building and my tiny beige room.

Not that any of them would know from the bell that I live here. I rent my room from Ingrid. It’s her name next to the buttons.

Down here on the ground, the crowd is regrouping. I’m too far away to hear what they’re saying, and I may not understand Dutch, but I understand facial expressions and body language. They’re discussing their next moves, spitballing ideas, negotiating who does what.

Shit. Now what? Do I keep walking? Find a café quiet enough to make my phone calls and wait these people out? Or do I put my head down and muscle my way to the door? By the looks of things, these people are not leaving anytime soon.

And then it happens. The decision is made for me. The blonde turns my way. Our eyes meet across the sea of shoppers and a row of parked bikes. Hers widen in surprise.

“!”

she shouts.

One by one, their heads turn. People start peeling away from the crowd, slowly at first, skirting around each other and oncoming traffic in the street, falling over each other in a race to get to me. They barrel across the street, a red rover line of bodies racing my way, whipping iPhones from pockets and aiming them at my face. Peppering me with questions in English.

What was your relationship with Xander van der Vos? Were you his girlfriend?

Where’s the necklace, ? Did you take it?

Did Xander mention the Cullinans to you? Did he tell you where they are?

What about all the other missing diamonds? How many were in his safe?

Where are the diamonds, ?

The shoppers hear diamonds, and they perk, but I’m more focused on Detective Boomsma’s words, ringing in my head: If someone wants that necklace as badly as the killer did, where do you think they’ll look first?

Xander had a safe, it was cleaned out, and now these reporters have connected me to the missing diamonds.

I duck my head, letting my hair fall across my face. “Excuse me, please. Let me through.”

My politeness gets me exactly nowhere. The reporters release another onslaught of questions, a claustrophobic mob of bodies that are so much bigger than mine. Holland is the land of giants, and these journalists are too tall, and there are far too many of them for me to just barrel through. I stare at their chests, their jostling elbows and thrusted microphones, their mouths as they bite off a string of razor-edged questions.

What do you hear from police, ?

Do you think they’ll make an arrest soon?

Are you a diamond thief? A murderer?

What do you say to the people on X calling you the Tinder Terminator?

If the moniker hadn’t come on the tail of words like thief and murderer, I might have laughed. Tinder Terminator. Give me a break. I hold up a hand and bark, “No comment.”

I have no idea if that’s even a thing here in Holland, and I know from experience that even if it is, there are no words magical enough to shut down a jacked-up reporter on a deadline.

“Seriously, guys, back up. I—I can’t breathe.”

They don’t back up. If anything, the huddle around me tightens.

I’m filling my lungs for a scream when suddenly, the sidewalk tilts. I squeal and lurch to the right, falling through a gap in the crowd.

Or no—not a gap. An empty spot that someone has elbowed their way into making, the same someone who now has a hold of my arm, long fingers clamped down on my wrist like a vise.

“Hey, let go!”

I shout, right as the fist gives a hard yank.

I’m heaved straight at one of the journalists, at close to seven feet a mountain of a man. He pivots right before I crash into his chest, allowing a sliver of space just big enough for me to squeeze through. My bag gets caught on something, a belt buckle, a fist, before it releases with a thud against my hip.

And then, suddenly, air. Freedom.

Ingrid, my savior in a teddy bear coat and red lipstick.

She barks something in vicious Dutch at the reporters, not vicious enough to make them back up, but at least they stop swarming long enough for her to hustle me across the street. A bike whizzes by, barely missing us as the biker leans on the bell. As soon as it’s gone, we break into a jog.

At the door, Ingrid digs through her keys for the right one, and I bounce on my toes. I can hear them behind us, clunky Dutch shoes coming across the pavement. I lean in and whisper, “You should hurry.”

Ingrid nods because she hears them, too. “I know.”

“They’re almost here.”

“I know.”

I’m bracing for another ambush when she shoves in the key, gives the doorknob a twist, and the two of us tumble inside. “Flikker op,”

she shouts, and I laugh because I know that one—the Dutch version of fuck off. She slams the door in their faces.

I’m about to thank her for a second time when another question worms its way through the wood, smacking me on the back of my skull, a direct hit.

, how do you respond to police naming you the lead suspect?